HTC might be holding off on the all new One until next month, but that doesn’t mean they’ve come to Mobile World Congress empty-handed. The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer recently took to the stage at MWC in Barcelona to announce their latest, the Desire 816. As this is yet another member of the Desire family, there’s not too much to write home about however, as mid-range devices go it looks like HTC might have finally cracked the formula. We’re not saying the Desire 816 is the new Moto G, but any smartphone manufacturer interested in selling devices in Asia and emerging markets should take now.
At 5.5-inches (with a resolution of 1280 x 720) it’s a sizable device that comes in a number of colors (as you can see above) and it features some decent, if uninspiring specs, too. Under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU, 1.5 GB of RAM, LTE support, 8GB of internal storage – with support up to 128GB of expandable storage – and it’s all powered by a non-removable 2,600 mAh battery. On the imaging side of things, there’s a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera (f/2.2) as well as a 5-megapixel front-facing camera (f/ 2.8). BoomSound has come along for the ride here as well. So, despite its glossy plastic build the Desire 816 has a lot going for it. The Desire 816 comes in at 7.99mm-thick and 165g, which certainly isn’t too bad for a budget-minded device.
On the software front, we’re looking at the latest version of Sense, and software features such as HTC Zoe and BlinkFeed. All of the key ingredients that people seemed to like about the One’s software have made their way across to the Desire 816, which is a good thing. Availability might be a sore point for our US readers however, as the 816 has only been confirmed to be going on sale in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa so far. The Desire 816 will be going on sale in select markets some time next month, and while there are unsubstantiated reports of the device heading to AT&T, Sprint or both there was no mention of this on stage in Barcelona.